February 15,2018
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, the Ridgewood Police report that a Steilen Avenue resident responded to Ridgewood Police headquarters to report being the victim of a fraud on February 12th. The victim reported she was advised all her Apple devices were compromised by a pop-up on her iPad from Apple technical support. A person then contacted her by phone and she was then convinced into purchasing a three year virus protection which she later learned was a scam after providing credit card information.
In “Tech Support Scams” such as this scammers call and claim to be computer techs associated with well-known companies like Microsoft or Apple. Other scammers send pop-up messages that warn about computer problems. They say they’ve detected viruses or other malware on your computer. They claim to be “tech support” and will ask you to give them remote access to your computer. Eventually, they’ll diagnose a non-existent problem and ask you to pay for unnecessary or even harmful services.
If you get an unexpected pop-up, call, spam email or other urgent message about problems with your computer, stop. Don’t click on any links, don’t give control of your computer and don’t send any money.
